Serial Uncut - J. A. Konrath [11]
“Mark was starting to smell.”
“Yeah, I noticed. But a few cubes of ice isn’t going to fix it. You here by yourself?”
She nodded.
“He didn’t try to rape you, did he?”
She just watched him, said nothing.
“That’s a nice piece of work in there,” he said. “That man must be double your weight, at least. How’d you pull it off?”
“I want you to leave.”
“Why?”
“Go!”
“Lucy, please. I know you don’t know me, but you can trust me.”
She stuck her chin out and fought back the tremor in her bottom lip.
“How’d you overpower that man?” he asked again.
“Straight razor.” She said it proudly.
“He flailed around a bunch, didn’t he?”
Lucy couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah. It was funny. But loud and messy, too.”
The man eased down onto the edge of the bed. “Why’d you kill him?”
“They wouldn’t give me a room. I drove six hundred miles to come to this conference, and then they wouldn’t even give me a room.”
“’Cause of your age.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever done anything like this before, Lucy?”
She shook her head. “But I thought about it a lot.”
“Wait. This was your first time?” She nodded. The man got a big grin on his face. “Well, how was it for you?”
“Amazing.”
“Yeah?”
“The blood was beautiful. So warm. I took my clothes off and rolled around in it.”
The man’s eyes sparkled. “I remember mine like it was yesterday. I’d give anything to go back and do it again for the first time.” He reached his hand out. “I’m Orson.”
She shook it.
He looked around the room. “So our friend in the shower. Who is he?”
“A writer.”
“Oh, shit. What’s his name?”
“Mark Darling.”
“Never heard of him.”
She pointed to the box of books. “Those are his books over there.”
Orson went over to the box and lifted a book, flipped through it, glanced at the back. “This is his first novel. That’s good.”
“Why?”
“No one here probably knows who he is, so he won’t be missed. Come on, where’s your stuff?”
“Over there. Why?”
“Pack it up. You’re coming with me.”
“No.”
“You can’t stay in here, Lucy.”
“I’m not leaving with you.”
“Listen. Did you have fun cutting Mark’s throat, rolling around in his blood?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to have the opportunity to do it again?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you better listen to me. If you get caught in this hotel room with that dead man, they’re going to lock you up.”
“But I’m not even eighteen.”
Orson walked over to the side of the bed and sat down next to Lucy. “Look at me.” She stared up at him. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. If you were smart, you’d do what I say, maybe even learn a little something.”
“How many people have you killed?”
“Enough to know we need to get out of this room right now.”
She followed Orson down the hallway to the first room past the ice machine.
“It’s a two-room suite,” he said as he opened the door and let her in. “My friend’s next door sleeping, so let’s not disturb him. I think this sofa folds out into a bed.”
She dropped her guitar case on the floor and helped Orson unfold the sofa sleeper. Orson swiped a blanket from his bed and tossed it to Lucy.
“Now I have to be honest,” he said. “I’m a little worried you might want to cut my throat while I’m sleeping.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Why don’t you give me your straight razor just to be on the safe side.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know you, Lucy.”
She lay awake for a long time thinking how tomorrow was the last day of the conference, and in some ways, the first day of the rest of her life. She wasn’t going home. She knew that. After Darling, how could she go back to geometry and biology and being a teenage girl in a suburban home? She could feel this stunning blackness flooding into her. It was filling her up so fast she could barely sleep, barely keep her eyes closed. She needed to see more blood. And soon.
She never slept. When the light began to push through the curtains, she sat up on the sofa and looked over at Orson on the bed, watching the man’s chest rise and fall, thinking how he’d been smart to take the razor from her. Nothing would